This is the third of four posts looking back at 2011 in science fiction and fantasy audiobooks. I started with my year in listeningand continued with a look into what I missed. Here, I’ll gripe at the world with my list of the most missing audiobooks of the year — those books I wanted to listen to but for which there was no audiobook. Lastly, I’ll lay out my picks for the year’s best in science fiction and fantasy audiobooks. But now: Where’s the audiobook?

The Old Man and the Wastelandby Nick Cole (Nick Cole, Apr 5, 2011) — one of the highest all time rated books at Amazon, Nick’s self-published short novel here has a few bits of uneven line editing here and there, but it plays very well in and around The Old Man and the Sea, Fallout, and more as an old man goes out into the wasteland of post-apocalyptic America — picked up by HarperCollins for multiple novels

The Alchemists of Kushby Minister Faust (Narmer’s Palette, Jun 13, 2011) — Faust’s self-published novel is two stories which can be read in more than one order, of two “lost boys” of Sudan, one being set in the modern day, the other being set 7,000 years ago

Dark Tangosby Lewis Shiner(Subterranean, Aug 31, 2011) — Shiner’s latest is a taut thriller set in Argentina; while I’m at it we still don’t have audiobooks for Frontera, Deserted Cities of the Heart, Slam, Say Goodbye, or Black & White

The Third Sectionby Jasper Kent(Pyr, Oct 25, 2011) — from Library Journal: Jasper Kent adds a third volume, The Third Section (Pyr: Prometheus), to “The Danilov Quintet,” his historical vampire series set in 19th-century Russia.

YOUNG READERS: For some reason I find myself reading more YR than YA; probably that’s reading with my kids but some of it is just being annoyed at “whiny teen angst” YA voices and finding “curious kid” much more interesting:

The Death of Yorik Mortwellby Stephen Messer and illustrated by Gris Grimly(Random House Books for Young Readers, Sep 27, 2011) — I read a chapter at a time of this quirky little book to my kids and we all enjoyed it; while I’m at it, last year’s Windblowne is also not in audio…

ANTHOLOGIES and COLLECTIONS: I only listened to a few of these last year (the Wild Cards anthologies come to mind) but in previous years I enjoyed the METAtropolis anthologies, and I’ll be listening to William Gibson’s Burning Chrome very soon:

After the Apocalypse: Storiesby Maureen F. McHugh (Small Beer Press, Nov 8, 2011) — recently selected as one of Publishers Weekly’s best books of the year in any genre — and, per Small Beer Press’s Gavin Grant, coming next year from Recorded Books

Anthology: Lightspeed: Year One edited by John Joseph Adams (Nov 15, Prime Books)

So. That’s a lot; too much to be useful. I cut quite a bit off of this list, too, but didn’t pare it down all the way to a list like “titles I would buy tomorrow if they were released”. On that list? At least: R/evolution, Postcolonialism and Science Fiction, Mechanique, Never Knew Another, Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights, Briarpatch, Sensation, and (most especially) Lavie Tidhar’s Osama, which is my #1 “where’s the audiobook?” for 2011. I want to listen to it:

UPDATE:

Audible wrote to let me know that some of these are in production or coming soon: